


Rubicon for Tigris

by Skull_Bearer



Category: Original Work, Vampire: The Masquerade
Genre: Blowjobs, But Tigris loves him anyway, Cuddles, Eating Disorders, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Nightclub, Original Character(s), Reunion, Reunion Sex, Trans Male Character, Usual Trainwreck!Nate, Vampire!Nate, Vampires, handjobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 13:31:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21016580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skull_Bearer/pseuds/Skull_Bearer
Summary: While celebrating his latest hunt, Nate meets an old flame...





	Rubicon for Tigris

**Author's Note:**

> This is a missing scene from my game, featuring my beloved OC Nate Brooks and his ever-loving boyfriend Tigris. There will probably be more because Nate is a ever growing well of bad ideas.
> 
> Yes, this is the same Nate as in Fallout 4. He gets around.

It wasn’t a night to stay home. Or to hunt, or to fight. No, not any more. This was a night to throw my head back and _scream_.

Hands in the air, the music running up and down my spine like equalizer bars, jerking and bouncing up and down like puppet strings. My voice, rising up like the wings of a bird and lost in the clouds of noise, the drum in my throat, the bass thrumming between my ribs. Like breath, like a heartbeat. Like being alive.

I dance, hands raised dark against the flashing lights, screaming. The sear of strobe and neon through my fingers. Green and yellow, and red red red and I’m screaming again because we _won_, we stalked and tracked and cast our net and we _won_. I can still see his face, superimposed on older memories. The twisted smile on his face as he put the brand to the curtains, opened into a cry as I ran, the hollow of the mouth swallowed into the barrel of a gun as he aimed and-

And gone, a palimpsest of earlier tonight as I kicked the door down. The eyes wide as before, mouth open again- in horror. _Yes, me. The one you thought you killed_. He dropped the cross. I fired. I shut the door, and waited for the drugs to kick in.

I can still hear him, the brutal little shit, begging and pleading as he scrabbled at the door to his panic room- only I changed the code for that too. _Please please oh no please no open open you fuck open!_

The slow slur of the drugs, the dead slump of his body on the floor. The exhilaration slowly unknotting on my stomach but not yet, not yet. Only a little longer. Until we win, until these hunters of monsters, the vilest monsters themselves, are all wrapped up and delivered to whoever wants them.

We hunted the hunters, and we won. The exhilaration is free, racing through me, wild and electric and I’m screaming again. Everything is bright and shimmering like a chandelier endlessly shattering and above it all I’m flying, riding music and light and noise until the world melts into shapelessness around me. Like dying. All over again.

That moment of end, the broken stutter of a last heartbeat between the settling emptiness in my veins and hot rush of blood against my teeth. Suspended in vivid clarity, like being trapped in glass. Petrified and eternal.

The song ends and I return to Earth with a jolt that almost sends me to my knees. An incoherent stillness, crackling around the edges with laughter and shuffling of feet and clothes.

The world settles, and resolves itself into people, the floor under my feet. The stage, the lights. I stumble over to the line of booths beside the bar and feel a bit- at a loss. People are getting drinks, ducking into the toilets. I- can’t do any of it. Don’t have to, but my hands are itching for _something_ to do.

I tap my fingers along the bar, rap them absently on the steel inlaid walls. Usually, I bring my laptop to have something to do but- I wasn’t thinking when we left. Maybe I should start my own nightclub. No break in the music, no toilets, no drinks behind the bar, no food. Blood on tap. Probably would attract more goths than actual vampires, but hey. Coolest bar in town within a week.

Heh.

People move, it’s getting late, most of the visitors are going, leaving just the hard-core partiers. Us, and others who- are maybe looking for something else. There’s a few interested looks my way, hungry eyes. I tip a hip their way; let the fabric of my dress slide off my leg, run my tongue over my teeth.

Because wouldn’t _that_ be fun. To find someone- tasteful, to kneel between his legs and give them the blowjob of the year- and maybe, while they’re lying there with their head back, out of it and so close- maybe a few bites to the inner thigh, where the femoral artery reaches the groin. Just foreplay to him, but- mmmm. Lovely.

I let my eyes drift over the options, seeing who meets my eyes, who smiles, who shifts their body a little more towards me. A heavyset man in leather, soft and friendly but not really what I’m looking for. A thinner man with a neat beard, bright blue eyes as the light pass over his face. He lifts an eyebrow and- hmmm, maybe. Or, maybe there? A man tucked away beside the bar, the lights playing off meticulous clothes, a dark, long fingered hand.

A step closer, and something clenches in my stomach because- no. I want it to be like him. But not that much like him. Oh, so very like. The beautiful clothes, so neat, always so precisely pressed even when we couldn’t afford an iron or the electricity to run it. The long fingers, the knuckles that little too heavy for such a delicate hand. I take that second step and regret it the moment my foot touches the floor.

He turns. Oh, it’s him. Oh please. No. Yes. Please. My tongue freezes behind my teeth as though they were made of ice. His long, narrow face, those long strands of dreadlocks framing it like weeping willow branches. _I love you_. The thought skitters across my mind like a mouse, there and gone so quickly, chased down by guilt.

He straightens, and for a moment I see another face. The hunter’s fear, branded on to this one. A man I hunted and a man I love, both looking at me in horror.

Then I blink and the moment is gone. He’s on his feet and he isn’t shocked any more, he is furious. And even that _hurts_ to look at because I know that anger. It’s not even anger, it’s sheer relief, masked by anger. “_Nathaniel!”_

I don’t move. I should run. I should snarl and push him away and- and-

And the time is trickling away, second by second as he closes on me, and I’m still not moving. “Nathaniel.” It’s softer, almost a breath, lost in the rumble of the club. Like a caress over my ears, down my spine. _I love you._

I look up, those dark, dark eyes; his skin smooth, almost mirror-black. His lips are pinched with pain at the sight of me, a shimmer of tears in his eyes. The anger is ebbing away, his hands twitch as though all he wants to do is to hold me and oh god _I can’t do this._

“Tigris.” I can barely recognize my own voice.

“I thought you were dead.” His voice is hard, clipped. He’s trying not to cry. God, I know him so well.

“I-“ _What am I supposed to say?_ “I was dying.”

“Not- any more?” The crack, splintering through the words.

I want to crawl into his arms. I want to cry. There is nothing to say. “No. I- I’m better now.”

He looks at me. His eyes trace over the too-proud bones of my face, the collarbones standing stark in the v of my dress, the wasted lines of my wrists. “Nathaniel.” So soft. I’m breaking. I can’t. _I can’t_.

“I am really better.” I try, pathetically. “I found- there’s- something I’m taking. It’s-“

“I know. You were dancing.” Closer, one more step and I could bury myself in him. “I saw you but- I-“ He breaks off, swallows, a tear runs down that perfect, sculpted face. The statue of a pharaoh, an ancient Nubian king, in the rain. Please no. Please no, I love him. “I’ve been looking for you for- quite a while. It’s- good to know I’ve not started to hallucinate.”

“No.” I whispers. “You didn’t.”

“You sent me away.” He says simply. “You sent me away and you crawled into a hole and waited to die. A hole where I couldn’t find you.”

I can’t be here. I have to move. God, I’m not even human anymore _why does it hurt so much?_

His mouth moves, teeth digging into his lower lip and he’s trying to ground himself, trying to hold himself together and I’m hurting him. I hurt him then and I’m hurting him now. “I spent the last two months trying to find you. I looked in every hospital. I called up every morgue. I thought you were- dead in some- some _shithole_ somewhere-“

The curse makes me flinch, as thought he’d tried to hit me and about as unthinkable. “I wanted to stay with you.” The pain rips free from his words, bleeding despair and no. I need to be here. I need to hear this. “I would have stayed, even to the end, you _know _that-”

“I know!” I can taste blood in my throat, in my nose. Oh please no I can’t cry. This is enough of a nightmare without bringing- that into it. “I’m- I’m a fucking coward Tigris. I told you. It wasn’t you. It was me. I couldn’t see you. I couldn’t see you hurting when I was dying, when I was the one _killing_ myself-“

He made a sharp slash with his hand. “No. None of that. If it was cancer you wouldn’t blame yourself. Don’t do it just because it’s in your head.”

The words sink into my bones and just- ground me. God, that’s a voice the greatest elders would kill to have. No powers, no mesmerism, and I’m just- nailed here, now.

“You cannot think you were sparing me.” His hands twitch and- he wants to touch me, as badly as I want to touch him, and this is _such_ a terrible idea but I can’t move and oh god I’ve faced horrors beyond horrors and this is what undoes me- “Did you think that I somehow- _wouldn’t_ _care_ about you, if you were not in front of me?”

“No! God, I meant it. I just- it was me. I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t handle both dying and hurting you. I knew it would hurt you but- I told you, I’m a coward.” I faced down a vampire hunter in his den tonight, a man who’d tried to burn me alive, with a host of crosses and stakes and fuck knows what else and I laughed in his face. But here, with Tigris- I can barely stand. I can’t look him in the face.

He takes a deep shuddering breath, and the awful stiffness just seems to- pour out of him. When I look up, his lips are quirked; his eyes crinkled in the corners with that sweet little smile that nearly finishes me. “I’m sorry.” I whisper.

“No.” Again, that order, deep inside me; locking me in place. “You were dying. You were starving to death. If that’s what you needed- what you need-“

That’s the chance. The excuse. To say yes, to pull away, to break the frail thread between us. Just a look, a nod, a word, anything-

I just stay there, dumb as a sea anemone, as the bustle of the club washes over us like the tide. There’s a strum of a guitar from the stage, the beginning of some new number.

“Nathaniel?” Hope, frail and wounded. I hurt him. I’m hurting him now. I’m about to hurt him so much.

“I’m a coward.” I have to step close as the noise builds. “I’m an utter fool. You were right. I shouldn’t have sent you away.”

He lifts his head, eyes brighter, the smile spreads, beautiful. “It might help if you remember that more often.” He touches my cheek and maybe he’s made of holy silver because it _burns_. “’I will listen to Tigris in the future,’”

I’m smiling. I can’t help it, his hand is so warm. God, can’t he feel how cold I am? “I will listen to Tigris in the future,”

“’And never run away again.’”

What am I doing? I’m not human. I’m a predatory, hunting thing, who waits in black alleys like a spider in a web. A spider in a tribe of spiders, all of whom would murder those who discovered they were there. Who would murder him, so easily.

“And never run away again.”

He opens his arms and I, the hunter of hunters, the bloodied survivor who’d been burnt, starved, tortured for years- I collapse like a wet house of cards, bury my face into his shirt and waistcoat and close my eyes as his arms come up around me, holding me so close, so warm. I put my arms around him and it’s- like holding a burning brand, like a ray of sunlight made flesh, burning and beautiful and utterly, utterly forbidden.

“Oh,” He breathes into my hair, a hand crisping into the tight curls. “Oh, little Nathaniel.”

I’m six foot, but to him I’m small. The brush of breath against my ear, the slow motion of his hand in my hair, against my back. I can hear the breath echoing in his throat and lungs, the thrum of his heart, the blood rushing through the veins so close to my lips, where my face is buried in the crook of his shoulder. I close my eyes and drown out the hunger before it forms. _I love you I love you I love you._

“My own.” He continues. Words like hands, running under my skin, tickling my cold heart, stroking up and down my spine. “Oh, my darling.”

And then, because I’m all out of terrible ideas and this just seems like a great one in comparison. I lift my head, and meet his lips. Soft and tender, plush with blood and I kiss him the harder for it, like maybe he could reach inside me and suck out all the pain and horrors.

It doesn’t work. But it’s never stopped him from trying. His hand cradles the back of my head, tilting my head back deliciously. I slide my arms around his neck and even in heels; I have to stand on tip-toes to meet him properly.

The music builds, I sway in his arms. We could dance, it’s not exactly what we can waltz to, but we’ve danced in trash alleyways and dripping attics and the cramped, tiny room we’d shared in the Rat Park. And the music might work for a swing dance.

“Oh, love.” There isn’t the space to do much, but we manage a few steps, swinging me around, hand on my hip. I lean back, held just by our joined hands, my hand red-ocher against his deep brown, and he pulls me close again, sweeping around and around until everything is colour and sound and _him_.

Then we pause, Tigris catches his breath and his mouth is drawn up into the most glorious smile, almost laughing and it’s been so long since I saw him laugh, saw him smile. Saw him.

And behind him, I see them. Three of them, at least. Two talking together, one slipping away to follow someone into the back rooms. Time for a snack, apparently. They haven’t seen us, not yet, but they will. I stop, hold Tigris still. “I thought- we could go-“ I nod to the booths, empty now everyone is dancing.

Tigris’ throat moves as he swallows. He strokes the back of his hand slowly up my neck, the edge of his nails tracing over my jaw, thumb on my cheek. It’s perfect, beautiful, he’s pulling me to the booth and it’s all going to be so, so good.

So, of course, I end up ruining it.

Just a glance, that’s all it takes. One glance back at the others. And Tigris follows my gaze.

He stiffens against me, and his hands snap around my shoulders. He pulls me tight to his chest, and quickly drags us both into the booth. _Shit. Shit oh shit oh shit._

“Nathaniel.” He pulls the curtain closed. I try and back away, but he doesn’t let go. “Who are those people?”

“Some- friends.” I stumble over even those few words. I’m a shit liar, and especially to him.

“Nathaniel.” God, the way he says my name. Like it’s something beautiful, tender and to be savored. “They aren’t your friends.”

They are. More or less, anyway. “I don’t know them too well.” It’s pleading, unspoken _please don’t go there please-_

“Where have you been?” Insistent, hands holding me close, I could pull away, break that hold or even those beautiful fingers. “Tell me, please. What happened to you?”

No words come. There are no words. I can lie. I could try. I would fail. I can tell the truth.

Even _thinking _it is like some- barrier has been broken, pulling it into the realm of possibility. “Oh Nathaniel.” Hands in my hair, thumbs stroking over my cheekbones. “What have you fallen into? Did they hurt you, darling?”

“No.” It’s wretched. “They- they’re the reason I’m better. They’ve been- fine. Gave me a place to stay.”

“Is it a cult, pet?” He shifts, urges me closer. A hand down my back, pressing me against him and I can’t. He’s looking in my eyes and for fuck’s sake I’m the vampire but I can’t look away_. I adore you._ “Nathaniel, you can tell me. I won’t let them hurt you.”

Oh fuck but what they could do to Tigris- I try and look away, but he hooks my chin and pulls me back to look at him. “You’re scared for me?”

“Yeah.” I whisper. “They- they could-“ This, I can’t say. This, I can’t _think._ There are rules. This is rule number one. Don’t tell anyone. They’d kill me. No. They’d kill him. They’d kill him and make me watch and then they’d stake me and leave me out for sunrise. And the worst part is they’d be right.

Tigris takes a deep breath, his hand goes to his phone, but at least he doesn’t suggest calling the fucking police. “Nathaniel. Tell me what is going on. I will not tell anyone, you know I will not.”

I can’t. But after all, I don’t have to. I don’t think any of the elders would take the excuse, but maybe if I just don’t say it- no one can overhear. Maybe they won’t be able to pick it out of my mind. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Okay.”

He nods, and shifts again until I’m almost in his lap, my head resting against his ear. I’m sickeningly, obscenely aware of the blood rushing just below the surface of his skin. It feels like blasphemy. “Tigris, I- if I tell you- there’s no way back. You’ll never be safe again. If they ever find out, they’ll kill us both and- not just them. There’s others. Worse ones and- oh fuck. What the _hell am I doing-_“ I try and pull away, but he doesn’t let me go. All my strength, and it’s like his touch just drains it all out of me.

“What you are doing, is telling me.” Tigris murmurs against my neck. “You are telling me because if you’re not safe, I do not want to be either. I’d want to be with you if you were in the middle of a warzone.”

“I might as well be.” I whisper.

“Then let me stand beside you.”

Like hands, reaching into my heart. I can’t, I can’t. I’m going to. I take his hand and touch it to my throat, where my pulse should be. Was. Isn’t. Tigris’s eyes narrow, confused- I wonder what it was first. Was it how cold I was, in this warm room? How dry my skin was, with no sweat because the only water in my body is blood? Or was the veins hanging still and slack inside me?

I see his eyes go wide; his fingers spread and press frantically at my throat, the hollow under my ear where the pulse should be, against my chest. The confused, frantic panic in his eyes, as the fear that I might be about to keel over at any moment is replaced by the bewilderment of the impossibility of it. Begging me for an explanation.

So I give one. I curl back my lips, and show my teeth.

He understands in the moment. His face goes slack, shocked, mouth opening in a tiny “oh”. I tuck my teeth away and shrug helplessly. What can I do? I’m a vampire.

“It was that or starve to death.” I whisper.

Because blood isn’t food. It’s essence, desperation, insanity and love, but it’s not food. I can sink my teeth into a would-be mugger’s neck and never feel any connection to the reek of rubber in my throat or the nauseous taste of vomit in my nose and- nothing. None of that. I can’t even look at food any more. Now I don’t have to. A strange cure for anorexia, but nothing else had worked. I’d recommend it.

And Tigris. Tigris knows. He understands. He’s heard me scream at night, in the nightmares. He’s made me soup and smoothies and raw eggs or whatever I could force myself to choke down. He searched desperately for everything that could keep me going, just for a few more days. He closes his eyes and holds me tight and that’s all, that’s the end of it. My boyfriend is a vampire. He understands, and accepts.

“I love you.” I should have said it earlier. I could say it every moment for every day of my eternal undeath and it’ll still not be enough.

“I will never talk about this to anyone.” He whispers.

“Please don’t.” I plead. “They- there’s a reason no one knows. They’ll hunt us down if they know what I just did.” Soon, I’ll feel it. The enormity of it. I’ll panic and scream and have a breakdown and it’ll just be mad Nate freaking out as usual. But for now- we’re safe. Tigris is warm, his arms are tight. I’ve missed him so much. More than I dared to admit to myself.

“They won’t.” So confident. Like prescribing the universe. Still, he’s been right so often. Why not once more? “They will never know, and we will never leave each other again.”

There’s only one thing to say. How many times can I say it? “I love you.”

He hums; I can feel his chest reverberate as I rest on him. Like he used to, when I had panic attacks. In the Rat Park, where we’d been dubbed acceptable roommates since we were both mad. Tigris helping me make smoothies when food finally had stopped being an option. Me holding his hands and repeating, slowly, over and over, that he had shut off the lights. That he had the keys. That he’s done his laces properly.

I run a hand over the buttons of his shirt. The holes are worn and a little ragged, as though the buttons had been pulled in and out, over and over until the fabric had started to fray.

He catches my hand. “No.”

“I shouldn’t have left.”

He sighs. “You’d be dead if you hadn’t.”

“Still shouldn’t.” And he doesn’t argue. Somethings are still wrong, even if they turn out right. Besides, I might still have run into that guy at the drag club, had him feel sorry for me and- well, I don’t think Tigris would have agreed to having me drinking anyone’s bodily fluids other than his, but maybe he’d have made an exception.

Maybe we wouldn’t have had vampire hunters crashing the party.

Maybe they would have anyway, maybe they’d have killed Tigris.

I manage not to shudder, and shove the thought away, pressing closer. No more what ifs. Here, now. My hand goes to the buttons of his shirt again, and this time, I start undoing them.

I feel Tirgis’ drawn breath, “Is that- still an option?”

“Yeah,” I smile, “like I’d have agreed otherwise.” I get a smile, and a laugh. I kiss him and oh, when did we last kiss while laughing?

We kiss harder, sweeter. I let my teeth press against his lips and he breaks for breath, panting. “Is- is that-“ He touches a finger to my canine, “Are you going to need to- drink?” He touches his throat. “If you need-“

_Yes. _“No!” It comes out too loud, “That’s- obscene. Fuck, no.”

“Shh.” He touches a finger to my lips. “It was simply a thought. If you ever need- but never mind.”

It would be sweet. It would be _unimaginable_. Feeding off shitbags trying to rob me, or bigots trying to turn me into a hate crime statistic is delicious enough, but _Tigris_\- it would be like drinking pure sunlight, liquid fire, molten silver. The best and last thing I would ever do. Lethal and wonderful. I kiss him instead, and that’s close enough. That’s more than enough. My hands on his shirt, flicking open the buttons and spreading over his chest. The two semi-circle scars over his pectorals, the curls of hair growing thicker than before. “Still got your supplier?”

“Yes, now hush.” He kisses me again, slides his hands under my skirt. His hands run up the seam of my stockings to the inside of my thighs. Brushes a thumb over the front of my panties. And that hasn’t changed because with only the brush of his fingers I go from half-hard to aching against his hand. I kiss him, kiss harder, and he pulls down the front of my panties and grips me.

“We’ll have this at home.” He murmurs against my lips. “I’ll get out that prosthetic you like, take you on the bed. Be inside you again.” It’s half dreamlike, like he’s expecting to wake up at any moment.

“I’ll blow you.” I pant. “Love your cock just as it is. God, I love you.” I rock back against him, and I can feel his cock, hard against my ass.

He strokes me, strokes his thumb in circles around the head of my cock. “Need to- get a condom.” No water in me, just blood. It would make a hideous mess. I dig one from my pocket, and Tigris takes it from my fingers.

There’s something knowing in his eyes. We might have broken up but it would still have been cheating. “You belong to me.” He whispers.

I nod. Stupid to ever think otherwise. “My Tigris. Mine.”

He rolls it out, over my cock. God, I want- I just want. I love him so much and his _hands_, I grind down on his cock and he groans. “Nathaniel.”

Even in the middle of sex and I will always be _Nathaniel_, never _Nate_. I grin and rock between his hands, his cock. I close my eyes- and open them at once. No, like hell I’m going to miss this. I lean over him, brace my hands on the wall above his head and push down harder until he’s whining sweetly in his throat, eyes almost shut, glittering at me through long lashes. “You’re beautiful.” I hiss. “You’re beautiful and light and life and I really don’t deserve you.”

“I decide that.” He squeezes around me- just this side of pain and it draws a rasp of want from my throat. “And you deserve all this and so much more. My lovely Nathaniel. My bright one.”

I’m going to give this man the best blowjob of his life when I’m done I swear. I choke out a laugh, ride him harder, he runs a nail along the underside of my cock and it’s so close to pain and oh I’m close it’s so perfect, so right both of us so close and I shudder, arch my back and- and-

I come so hard it’s like a gun going off inside my head. I jerk into his hand, shake and nearly lose my grip on the wall. He braces me with a hand on my chest, murmuring “Yes, yes darling, so beautiful. Just like that love, just like that, all for me.”

“You.” I choke. “All yours.” I slump down and he wraps his arms around me, kisses pressed to my hair, my cheeks, my mouth.

“Darling, beauty. So bright, my love.” He whispers in my ear, rolling off the condom and tying a knot in it. “Rest a moment. Let me hold you.”

“Nah.” I lift my head, and kiss him back, it’s wet and sloppy and absolutely wonderful. “Gonna blow you. Don’t even need to _breathe,_ it’s gonna be awesome.”

He shudders. There’s a sweet flush along his throat and collarbones, a touch of red to that dark skin and I can feel the heat of him grow as the capillaries dilate. He’s close, I can feel the desperate cant of his hips, hungry for contact.

It’s a wrench to pull away, slide down the whole length of his long body and sink down to my knees under the table. Pulls his legs over until he’s straddling me, my head buried between his legs. I can smell him, skin and blood and musk, the wetness soaking through his tight pants. I mouth him through the fabric, he’s more defined now, a stiff pressure against my tongue.

“Darling.” He breathes. “Please.”

The word wrings another shudder from my slack body, begging, pleading. My Tigris, all mine. I unbuckle his belt, slide the buttons out until there’s only the cotton of his underpants between us- already nearly soaked through.

“You really missed me.” I whispers against him, and feels him shudder wordlessly. I lick the nub of his cock through the underpants, there’s enough of it now for a very nice mouthful and I suck him hard, God, he tastes good. Always did, and now there’s so much _more_, all the thousand different flavors of him and the pulse of veins so close to the surface and the smell and texture and I can’t get his underwear down fast enough and bury my face in him.

Tigris gives a low, incoherent moan and fists both hands in my hair, nails dragging over my scalp. He’s wet and sweet and perfect and I curl my tongue around him, under the hood of skin, down the river canyons of flesh just beneath his cock.

“Nathaniel.” He whispers, luxurious and pleading. “Nathaniel.”

_One day, I’ll get you to call me Nate_. I smile and suck, lick and trace and brush the tip of his cock with my teeth. He hisses, chokes, moans- no more words, just desperation. Oh, I want to _bite_, I want to sink my canines into the veins pulsing so temptingly close and _drink_ and- no. No. I close my eyes and cover my teeth, running my tongue all the way up him.

Tigris wraps his legs around my head, and orgasms with a long, desperate shudder. I lick him gently, one last kiss to his achingly oversensitive cock to make him moan, and I push my way back up.

Tigris is slumped back against the seat, _wrecked._ His eyes half-slitted where he couldn’t bear to look away from me, any more than I could from him. Clothes a mess, buttons lose and hanging everywhere, jacket off his shoulder until he has to pull the sleeves back to hold me close.

I got willingly, burying myself in skin and disheveled clothes, the smell of sweat and sex overpowering everything else. I can close my eyes and pretend, for a moment, that we’re home. In the Rat Park, on our rickety little bed.

Outside, the music is fading, the faint clatter as the instruments are packed away. The night growing late, and I can feel the faint pressure of the coming sun as less and less of the world stands between us.

One more temptation, the third, because these things always come in threes. To go home with Tigris, stay and love him.

Be found out.

Die.

“I love you.” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer. His fingers running through my hair, down my back. I know what I mean. “Like Cinderella, before midnight?” He says at last.

We’re long hours past midnight. “Before someone wonders where I’ve gone.”

I open my eyes in time to see his face twist with pain. I know. It hurts. We had so little before but at least we had _us_. Now, I have anything I want but him. “For tonight.” I promise. “There’s tomorrow. And after that, and-“ I break off, that road goes to place I don’t want to see.

He nods. “For now.” He touches my cheek, then grips me, close and tight. “Just for now. We will fix this, Nathaniel.” Taut and harsh, like ordering the world into a new form. This is how it is and forever will be. “You and I, we will make this work. You are not going anywhere.”

“Never leave you again.” I echo. Promise.

He nods firmly. Kisses my forehead like a benediction. “You are mine. Don’t you ever forget that.”

I nod. Rest against him. A few stolen moments, before the morning. My Tigris. Mine. River of Babylon, source of life. I always knew I’d love you forever, but now I know what that means.


End file.
